Mainstream Media Still Getting LENR Story Wrong

The mainstream media is still either ignoring or worse getting one of the most stories around today Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) or cold fusion wrong. The so-called science and technology reporters have ignored such recent developments as NIWeek where Francesco Celani was publicly demonstrating an LENR device, Andrea Rossi’s announcements, Defkalion’s announcements, the fact that an LENR device has been up and running at MIT for over six months, NASA’s announcement that it is working on LENR and Brillouin’s ability to raise venture capital.

Martin Fleischmann in retirement

The only story to make the mainstream press on LENR has been Martin Fleischmann’s death on August 3. Surprisingly most of the media was very respectful of the late Mr. Fleischmann. Some outlets such as Fortune Magazine and the Deseret News in Utah even mentioned current developments in LENR in stories on Fleischmann’s death.

Yet the inevitable hatchet job from a so called “science reporter” has now appeared. The Los Angeles Times published a sort of obituary by a staffer named Thomas H. Maugh II on August 13. From the story it’s obvious that Mr. Maugh hasn’t been following recent development in cold fusion. He claims that nobody has been able to duplicate Pons and Fleischmann’s success since 1989. That’s not true of course it has been duplicated hundreds of times.

The story tries to discredit Fleischmann and LENR by claiming that he was responsible for the media circus surrounding cold fusion back in 1989. We know from revelations by Fleischmann himself that he was apprehensive about using the term cold fusion and holding a press conference. He was talked into it by others.

Perhaps worst of all Maugh ignores Fleischmann’s many accomplishments such as serving as President of the International Society of Electrochemists from 1970 to 1972, being a member of the Royal Society (Britain’s most distinguished group of scientists) and winning the Palladium Medal from the US Electromechanical Society. Instead the story portrays Fleischmann as a crank he was not. The idea behind this piece is not to report the news but to discredit Flieschmann and LENR it is propaganda not journalism.

It also claims that their research has been “dismissed by the scientific community.” I suppose Peter Hagelstein, Robert Duncan, Michael McKubre Sergio Focardi, Guiseppe Levi, Brian Josephson, Francesco Cellani, Joseph L. Zawodny, Dennis Bushnell, George Miley and many others are not part of the scientific community. It’ll certainly be news to them.

Perhaps Mr. Maugh ought to spend some time doing a little thing called research. Unfortunately he won’t, like most self-proclaimed reporters he’ll sit around and wait until somebody shows him the news. From this article it’s easy to see why newspapers like the LA Times are losing so much circulation. They’re incapable of reporting the news. To make matters worse some of their writers such as Mr. Maugh are not above insulting the dead if it advances their personal agendas.

Martin Fleischmann deserves better and so do all the people out there who are serious about LENR. Judging from this story I wonder what will take to get the mainstream media to wake up to this story, probably LENR work by a company that buys a lot of advertising. That will get them to start “believing” in it because it might affect their paychecks.

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